With more people working from home, you may find yourself sitting for longer periods of time at your computer than actually at your workplace. If you’re sitting riveted to the computer monitor for hours without taking enough breaks to stand, walk and move around the room, you can eventually suffer from a unique new problem called dead butt syndrome, otherwise known as gluteus medius tendinopathy.
Just as you may guess, this condition affects the backside and those muscle groups in how they fail to support the pelvis to keep the body aligned as it should. What happens is that your glutes may feel numb or you could experience that radiating sort of pain down the leg as you would if you ever had sciatica. It also is common to suddenly have lower back pain, hip or knee pain that could become inflamed if it continues too long without being treated.
The best defense against dead butt syndrome is the simplest thing that you can do. Try getting up as often as you can to just stretch your legs or walk around the room. When time permits such as during your break or lunch, try climbing stairs for a few times can have lasting benefits. Otherwise, you risk the same problems as anyone with a sedentary lifestyle such as greatly increasing your odds of developing cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, and more undesired conditions.
Beauty wise, sitting too long also can cause the shape of your butt to spread out and flatten due to the gluteal muscles lengthening and hip flexor muscles tightening instead of keeping a more flattering rounded shape.
Something to keep in mind is that you can’t neglect the importance of stretching those gluteal muscles. If you don’t, then all sorts of trouble may be in your future, especially if you plan to take up running or other strenuous exercise. Therefore, do yourself a favor and try daily reminders to prevent dead butt syndrome by attaching a post-it note to your monitor, side of your desk or bulletin board to get up or set your alarm to ring every so often, if that is what it takes to get moving.
